The Research On The Liability System Of Carriers Of The Rotterdam Rule

In order to adapt to the development of international carriage of goods by sea and unify 1 aws applied to international carriage of goods by sea, International Maritime Committee draf ted and developed a new set of international rules - the Rotterdam Rule. The Rotterdam R ule, compared with the past three conventions, is more identical with the development o f international maritime goods transport industry. And the major change reflected on the lia bility of the carriers: expanding obligations of carriers. The special changes are showed as foll ows: extending liability period and changing the responsibility for delay in delivery of goods,extending airworthiness time, magnifying the obligation of cargo management, amending criterion of liability and burden of proof, and adding and removing several disclaimers.It has been more than 20 years since Maritime Law had been introduced and enforced and in China. During this time, owing to the changes of legislative environment and shipping practice, the many new argument emerged in maritime judicial of our country could not be solved effectively. So, it is imperative that Maritime Law be perfected and improved timely,drawing lessons from the reasonable, advanced content and methods of international maritime legislation, by studying and analyzing the Rotterdam rule.This paper is organized as follows. The first section introduces the research background,meaning, methods and current status of this topic, and presents innovation of this paper as well. In the second section,the judicial interpretation,main contents and related concepts of the liability system of carriers are introduced, and the development trend of the liability system of carriers international carriage of goods by sea is also induced by analyzing its development history. Section 3 presents the changes of the Rotterdam Rule comparing with compared with the past three maritime goods transport conventions and makes comments on the changes. Section 4 evaluates the liability system of carriers in the Rotterdam Rule and theorized the practical grounds adapting to new shipping rules. Finally, the last section concludes this paper. This section, Based on the the analysis of the Chinese liability system of carriers and current situation of maritime transport development in China, according to the related rules of the Rotterdam Rule, puts forward some reasonable suggestion on the Maritime Law with the principle of improving the development of maritime goods transport industry of China.